2017 Golden Globes: A Fashion Feast

Perhaps it was a response to the gloomy state of the world right now, or maybe Hollywood’s A list felt the need to celebrate surviving the great celebrity cull of 2016, but the 2017 Golden Globes red carpet felt more sartorially adventurous than any awards show in recent years.

If this showing was anything to go by, the nude sequinned column dress seems to have finally released its strangle hold on celebrity style. There were couple of close cousins, to be sure, not least this Armani Privé armoured chest plate dress on Naomie Harris;

Predictible? Yes – for her. Boring? definitely not; and Priyanka Chopra‘s Ralph Lauren is saved from banality by its beautifully touchable, textural hand-embroidery and rich gold tones. If these are as close as we get to nude columns this awards season, I’ll take it.

What I’ll also take are more carpets like Sunday’s where people took risks, and not just with their dresses – there were some interesting beauty looks too. If there were a lot of pink dresses, there were just as many pink eyes, and that’s a tricky look to pull off without looking like you have conjunctivitis.

For me, Kristen Bell’s plunging Jenny Packham totally held its own in a sea of colour, perhaps because it feels like a real change of direction for her, a little edgier than she usually goes. That tuxedo-inspired neckline is pushing all my buttons.

and though I didn’t hate Winona’s Viktor & Rolf – it was very her, in a charmingly vintage-Winona way, like I could actually imagine this on her in the 90s – it’s just not driving me wild, and like anyone who a teenager in the 90s, I’m open to being driven wild by anything remotely Winona-related.

Blake Lively’s velvet Atelier Versace was memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. Or at least, for two big, ugly reasons: namely Glomesh Pocket A and Glomesh Pocket B, resting on her hips for no apparent reason other than to draw attention to Fugly Bracelet A and Fugly Bracelet B.

I love the styling of this. Pink eyeshadow, again, this time with a retro pale pink lip; those huge, teardrop earrings; the navy velvet clutch… However, I will go on record and say that if this level of chest contouring becomes the norm, I’m out. Of, like, everything.

Sunday also saw some interesting monochrome looks on show – Janelle Monae was 80s-tastic in an Armani Privé puffball; Game of Throne’s Sophie Turner perplexed in an uber-directional Louis Vuitton; and Julia Louis-Dreyfus was uncharacteristically off target in Georges Chakra – but overall, it was all white on the night for many of Hollywood’s leading ladies, and for the rest, colour was king. Big risks paid off for some;